On Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:09:12 -0800 (PST), Frogwatch
wrote:

I hate cell phones because they rarely work well for me and so I
rarely use them However, sometimes they are useful but then I am in a
place where they do not work (say 10 miles out to sea).
So, considering how little I use a cell phone and that I still pay
roughly $40/month, why not buy a satellite phone that gives me real
coverage. A reconditioned Motorola Iridium phone costs $695 and then
it costs roughly $1.99/minute ( I will not talk on any cell phone for
more than a minute).
A Globalstar phone is about $400 and they have various plans for about
$30/month with small amounts of free time (about an hour/month).
I never text or take pics with a phone so just the basics is good for
me.
Thoughts?

Globalstar gets very poor user reports compared to Iridium, lots of
connection problems and dropped calls so I ruled it out. If you buy
large blocks of minutes, Iridium can be less that $1/minute but if you
are only concerned with emergencies and occasional use it doesn't
really matter that much.